Cooperation is Futile
by Argentcoeur
Summary: Blackstar and Kid are being their annoying selves, and Liz just wants some peace. She finds something to shut them up. Things get weird when Blackstar wakes up. No pairings or hint of romance besides confession to symmetry.
1. Kidstar?

Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater

Welcome to the place I call my mind. Well, not exactly. This is merely a refined and nicely organized bit of my subconscious; a dream from one night, placed on paper.

So this is not my mind. But I welcome you, nonetheless, to a story that starts just as comedic as this introduction did. And unlike this introduction, it shall turn horrifying. (For the characters at least)

* * *

It started mild. It was a normal mission, with a destination that wasn't too far away with a kishin egg so low-level no one wanted the mission. Being free for the day, Kid and his weapons were given the mission. The one wrench in their otherwise normal day was that Blackstar and Tsubaki had been tacked with them. So that had put a stop to their favorite form of transportation: Beelzebub. Kid was calm until their path became less than symmetrical, and considering it was a traveler's road, it could never be symmetrical. Traveling with Kid was a pain, thought Liz. Even an hour without a worry over symmetry would be a blessing.

Then there was Blackstar. Liz could stand only so many shouts of bragging and taunts. Now, Blackstar tried to taunt Kid into a fight, resulting in Kid crying about his hair. Even Patty looked tired of it at that point, and Tsubaki's blind eye had become a thin smile. Growling, Liz dug in her bag, shoving supplies in circles until she reached a rectangular object wrapped in an extra blanket at the bottom.

With a sly glance at Kid, still in his world of dismay, Liz opened the book, the replaced leather-and-glue binding cracking hidden underneath Blackstar's boasts. Patty peeked over her shoulder, then made a face at the tiny script. Curiosity won the upper hand in Tsubaki, but she leaped back after catching a glimpse at the content of the book.

"What are you doing with that?" Tsubaki whispered, terror trying to raise her voice above the white noise. "Where did you even get that?"

Liz scanned the contents with a distracted answer. "It's Kid's. He studies books on witchcraft and other stuff because he can do it, even if he doesn't use it often. Summoning his skateboard is one spell he's learned."

Tsubaki nodded and moved closer. "What are you looking for, though?"

"I need something to shut these idiots up. I can trick Kid into casting some of these if they only need a word spoken or something else simple."

Tsubaki's confidence came back and she pointed to a few titles. Liz checked them, but turned them away because of complicated set-up or unwanted effects.

"Hey," Liz stopped at one page. "Tsubaki, do you mind if this affects your Meister as well? This spell has a counter spell, so we can undo it after a few hours of peace.

Tsubaki read it over. "Are you sure about this one? Not to be rude, but your Meister is a bit annoying. If the headache doesn't last long, the rest of the effects might make things unbearable."

"Don't worry. When it says headache, it's talking about an almost coma-like state. Kid snaps out of it after an hour, but with a spell like this, it'll be a couple of hours."

"I see now. How do we get Kid to say the spell?"

Liz smirked, an expression rarely seen on her face since her days in Brooklyn. "That's the easiest part. First we wait for the right opportunity."

They watched the commotion between Blackstar and Kid, keeping the book out of sight. Blackstar shouted insults and repeatedly boasted about himself. Kid accepted all of the insults, agreeing with them. He ignored all of Blackstar's bragging. That is, until Blackstar came back to symmetry.

"I'm more symmetrical than you!"

Kid stopped crying abruptly. His head jerked up to glare at Blackstar. "You? Symmetrical?" he hissed. Blackstar went silent, smiling as wide as possible.

"What makes you think you're symmetrical? You're the farthest thing from symmetry there is! Your hair is an asymmetrical mess and you have a star on only one shoulder! How could that possibly be symmetrical?"

Kid ran at blackstar, and the other Meister ran at him screaming. They exchanged blows at high speeds, though not as fast as they could have gone in an all-out fight. Finally presented with a chance, Liz cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. It was a question, Tsubaki could infer from the tone. She couldn't catch the words, but as Liz started a conversation with Kid mid-fight, even Patty throwing in some words, she realized it was in a language completely foreign to her.

Blackstar and Kid both went for hits on the other; Kid realizing they were both going to collide too late because of the distraction Liz and Patty provided, Blackstar loving every minute of it. Their punches never connected and they instead fell into one another, collapsing on the ground with sudden exhaustion. Patty cheered, Liz smirked, and Tsubaki couldn't believe it worked.

The form on the ground groaned, morphing between Kid and Blackstar. He clutched his head, and slowed to unconsciousness. Patty laughed and poked his face, making an interested sound when the flesh rippled like water. Tsubaki had a small smile at this success. "What did you do?"

"Kid knows a ton of languages and we go to a bunch of different countries, so learning linguistics is a must for us. I recognized the language of the spell, so I got him to say the words. He doesn't even realize when he's speaking another language, so it was easy."

"Well now what do we do? We can't carry him all the way to the kishin egg."

Liz was already flipping through the book. "Hey, wake up a moment." She jabbed a finger at the morphing form, jerking back at the slimy feel.

He groaned. Liz asked something else, and the form paused at Kid long enough to groggily reply. Black poured from his hand, forming an enlarged Beelzebub, large enough to carry a corpse. Patty pulled rope from her bag and made a leash for the demon skateboard. She moved the form onto it, Liz and Tsubaki reluctant to touch him again. Patty giggled at it all.

Their journey was from then on quite peaceful, punctuated by the occasional groan from the passenger. Patty announced that he had stopped morphing, and had settled on a form. The outfit had quickly become a cross between Blackstar's and Kid's outfits, and Patty couldn't help but point out that it had ended up symmetrical. The form had curiously stopped at Blackstar, with one small difference.

"He looks so odd with flat hair," Tsubaki commented.

"Sis, what do you think Kid would look like with spiky hair?" Patty asked. Liz shook her head at her little sister.

"We have another hour or two, at least."

Indeed, and that hour of silence was so wonderful to Liz. Her life on the streets had been filled with traffic and racial slurs, then she had traded that for another annoyance; Kid's symmetry obsession. This was a slice of peace. But, of course, all good things must come to an end.

There came a groan, and then a thump as the person fell off the skateboard.

"Deathstar! You're awake!" Patty ran over to the form, announcing his face felt human again. It took Tsubaki and Liz a moment to realize that Patty had named this merged form.

"What..?" He got to his feet, brushing off the dirt as Kid would. "I'm...Blackstar, right?"

He gripped his head, only to find limp blue hair. "I'm Death the Kid? No, that can't be it."

He looked around as if looking for an answer. His eyes landed on Tsubaki and lit up. "Tsubaki! Tell me who I am!"

His wide eyes, excited tone and giant grin decided Tsubaki's answer. "You're Blackstar, of course."

"...but you're also Kid. Merged together. I'm not sure how it works," Liz added.

He stared at Liz. With a wide grin, he shouted, "I'm Kidstar!"

"What the..."Liz muttered. "That's worse than Blackstar. Patty's was better."

"Kidstar! That's better than what I came up with." Patty laughed at Kidstar. It must have been Kid's mind that stopped him from asking what the previous name had been.

"I feel like I could conquer the world," Kidstar exclaimed. "I must be symmetrical!"

Tsubaki choked and Liz sighed. Patty tilted her head, reminiscent of Lord Death and small dogs bred to have tiny skulls. "But you have a star on one shoulder and not the other."

Kidstar looked at his right shoulder. Then the left. Then he stole a hand mirror from Liz's waiting hand. He stared at his hair. Then his shoulders. And a horrible realization dawned on Kidstar.

"I'm disgusting! Asymmetrical garbage! I don't deserve to live!"

"Bla-Kidstar! It's okay! I don't think you're asymmetrical."

Kidstar looked up from his degenerative state on the ground at Tsubaki with wide, pleading eyes that were so foreign on Blackstar's face. "You really think so?"

Tsubaki found it hard to keep smiling when his expression scared her half out of her mind. Liz and Patty came to her rescue, dealing with him as they would with Kid anytime he had an episode.

"No, you deserve to live, and you're not garbage."

"Garbage smells, and Kidstar doesn't!"

Kidstar regained confidence surprisingly quickly. He stood, and surprising the sisters and making Tsubaki smile, shouted to them all, "I'll be the most symmetrical person in the world!" He laughed; the barking arrogant laugh of Blackstar.

Patty laughed. Liz muttered, so only Tsubaki could her, "I think you were right 's the counter spell?"

They ducked out of sight, Patty keeping Kidstar occupied. They flipped though the book until they came to the page. "Its just moon in that language."

"What language is it anyway?"

"Not a clue. I think it's spoken in parts of Scandinavia," Liz answered, closing and tucking away the book.

"Eh? You don't know?"

Liz waved her worry away. "It's one of those sammy languages."

They found Kidstar regaling Patty with fictitious stories filled with bragging and symmetry which had obviously never happened. Possibly a side effect of merging with Kid, he wasn't shouting, and they couldn't help but notice that Blackstar's tanned skin had turned pale.

"Kidstar," Liz said to get his attention. She asked a casual question of him.

Kidstar blinked and frowned. "Sorry? Liz, what are you saying? I don't understand you."

Liz asked again, and after more confusion, turned to Tsubaki and Patty. "He doesn't understand me."

"Maybe it's because you're using bad grammar," Patty snickered.

"That's to get him to correct me, and say the word."

Patty stared at Kidstar, watching him glance between them all, confused. "What happened?"

"If I have to guess, I'd say that Blackstar is messing with the magic, or his presence has nullified Kid's magic."

"Isn't Kid made of magic, being a Grim Reaper?" Tsubaki squeaked, scared of what they might have done to their friend.

"You're right, it can't be that simple. So..." Liz scrunched her nose in thought, oblivious to Tsubaki's worry. "They aren't completely merged, maybe. Kid's Reaper body must be already working on separating them. It's a waiting game now. Although it'll be a pain to fight the kishin egg like this. We don't even know where it is."

"The kishin egg?" All eyes turned to Kidstar. He pointed in the direction they had been heading. "It's right over there. It appeared a while ago."

The girls took off running, Liz dragging Kidstar along. Paty reached the tiny town first. She turned a corner as Kid said 'left', and shouted a string of childish insults that she had somehow made demented. A man scrabbled away screaming, his wobbly legs sending him careening to the walls of buildings.

"Patty!" Lix yelled, holding out her hand ready to catch her sister. "Tsubaki, you're Kidstar's weapon!"

The weapons nodded and transformed. Liz snatched the gun out of the air and fired out several shots at the beast that scurried into the open, swerving around to avoid becoming an easy target for its darting eyes.

The kishin egg started toward Kidstar, but evidently changed its mind and thought Liz the bigger threat after a shot connected, as it pounced over to her, cracking a slab of cement in the sidewalk. It dodged left and right, and tried to deflect with fan of long blades in place of fingers only to recoil in pain. It leaped in Liz's path and swung a bladed forearm at her shocked face. She jumped and threw Patty, transforming past the kishin egg o land as a gun in her sister's hand. The kishin egg flinched away, blinded by the pink light of the transformation.

Patty jumped over the blades as they came to slice her. She kept shooting, but the kishin egg swerved around to growl in a different direction. Liz could hear Tsubaki's voice yelling from her weapon form, and notified Patty of why the kishin egg stopped attacking them. Patty shot at its head, and it turned back to her. It pounced, and the sisters switched spots again.

It seemed that at some point in the exchange the kishin egg had gained a modicum of intelligence, since it then knocked the two apart mid-transformation. The sisters landed on either side of the monster. The kishin egg howled at the pain from touching the pink light, and Liz and Patty hesitated from the shock of what happened.

"What happened to Kidstar and Tsubaki?" Liz asked when she could in her gun form. As if speaking had summoned him, their Meister's voice rang out to them.

"Liz! Patty!"

The sisters transformed to land in a hand. Liz found Blackstar holding them, and jerked away her soul wavelength before she remembered. She let herself connect, pleasantly surprised when she found Kid's and Blackstar's souls to be separate. Shots fired at the kishin egg, then switched to close combat.

Liz and Patty found themselves used more for hammer-like hits than as the tonfa, the unusual fighting style bringing a sense of vertigo. Several times they cried out when Kidstar's grip slackened, almost throwing them, just as Blackstar did with Tsubaki in his unorthodox style

Kidstar chased off the kishin egg with more shots, the corrupted soul ducking around each blast of pink. Once it disappeared from view, however, Kidstar halted.

"Kidstar, why did you stop? Go after it!"

"Liz. Patty. I...I love y-"

"WHAT?"

The two guns flinched and stared at the source of the outburst. Tsubaki went a deep shade of red and clapped her hands over her mouth. Kidstar ignored her and hugged the guns tight to his chest, sobbing with happiness.

"I love your symmetry!"

Liz groaned, and Tsubaki nearly fainted dead away.

"It's true!" Kidstar cried, sounding like he had truly found the love of his life. "All this time I had no idea what I was missing when waving around the chain-scythe-" Tsubaki gasped. "-and here I have found the true symmetrical weapons, ones that perfectly compliment my fighting style and preserves the important aesthetic that is symmetry! Not a scratch on you, not a mark on either, and you resonate just the same as the other-"

Liz cut off his rant with a sharp tug on the ear, having wriggled from his grasp in his trance. "You gave us this same speech on our first mission together. We have a kishin egg to catch again."

Liz started walking down the street, Patty skipping behind her. Liz paused and arched an eyebrow at the other two. "Kidstar? Tsubaki? You two coming?"

Tsubaki shook herself from her shock and stuttered an apology. Kidstar muttered something about 'not symmetrical anymore' and followed. Kidstar directed them to the kishin egg, but they went cautiously.

The town's inhabitants hid in the windows of buildings, locks clicking as they realized the reality of the situation with the students' presence. Lights went on for curtesy's sake, although everyone turned them off as soon as the students could be seen in the middle of the artificial light. Liz found it annoying that she had to keep blinking and adjusting to the constant changing of the lights.

Kidstar slowed. "That's odd. I sense it below us. How does that work?"

"Blackstar doesn't have Soul Perception, so that might be affecting your ability," Tsubaki suggested. Patty experimentally stomped the ground. Kid was the only one out of the group with the ability to sense souls, and now that advantage might have been unintentionally sabotaged.

"Usually we search just by wandering or waiting until we hear a scream. It's too dark to search on foot, and everyone's inside," Liz said. "Anything special you and Blackstar do?"

Tsubaki blushed. "Blackstar yells to catch its attention."

Liz muttered, "And everyone else's- huh?"

The ground shook again. Patty rushed over and latched onto Liz's arm. "I didn't mean to stomp that hard!"

"Yo-you didn't d-do anything," Liz said, her voice shaking as cracks appeared around them. They ran to escape the danger. Their hearts leapt into thir throats as the piece of street they stood on plummeted several feet. Hands moved to stop falls. The ground continued to shake; they dared not move. Their gasps echoed in a space they could not see, and rose back from underneath.

Screams ripped from their lungs as the ground lurched again, falling farther than before. The light from the streetlamps reached down with them, yet the drop proved too deep to be much more than pinpricks in the dark. That light reflected from long blades on arms clinging to the hole above. The metal slid past to the shadows, up and to the surface of the Earth.

* * *

Actually, in my dream, Kid and Blackstar were tricked into touching a magical artifact to induce the spell. But then I couldn't figure out why they would have that kind of thing, so I added a spellbook. And in my dream, Kidstar first called himself Deathstar, and Liz said, "Huh. He actually came up with a cool name." Then my dream _rewound_ like a video, and then he announced he was Kidstar and Liz said, "What the...That's worse than Blackstar."

Sami languages, not sammy. It's the root of most languages spoken in the northern Nordic countries in Europe, much like French and Italian are Roman languages.

Morbid fun fact: Tiny dogs have a very high chance of developing syringomyelia, where their brain grows like normal, but the skull is too small for it to fit in there. So the brain will press against the skull, bruising it and making it swell more, and the dog will at times tilt its head on a normal basis, a lot of times making a nodding motion like that. Imagine squeezing your foot in a shoe several sizes too small. It's like that. It's because dogs aren't naturally small like that, and it took careful breeding to get them that small, but dogs are bred for appearance, not health, so a lot of purebred and near-purebreds are rampant with genetic diseases.

I did some research on the chain scythe and tonfa, since I wondered how similar the fighting styles of Kid and Blackstar would be. Kid uses Liz and Patty as tonfa in close combat. Holding them upside-down makes it easy to switch to how one holds tonfa. Just take his pinky off the trigger, and rotate them so the guns are against his forearms. That's how you primarily hold tonfa. My only experience with this weapon is wikipedia and a tonfa-wielder as my favorite character in Soul Caliber II to fight with. I haven't written many action scenes before, so I'm sorry if it's not up to par and could you please tell me how to improve?

This story will total around 10,000 words when finished. I'm simply retelling my dream. Although, there is a point that I don't remember. From the start of the fight with the kishin onward is not my dream anymore. There'll be a few more spots from my dream, then I'll finish up my story.

Preview of future chapters!: After the part where my dream ended, the story takes a very depressing, and horrifying, turn. Seriously. Kid is suddenly placed in a bad light, Tsubaki ready to murder him, and I'm undecided on whether to have a character death. Liz is filled with regret, Patty crying, and a drunk witch OC. And this started as crack, too.


	2. Tastes Minty

Rating bumped up because of a feisty drunk witch. Nothing happens, nothing more than what you might find in a magazine advertisement for perfume.

* * *

"Ow..." Liz moaned. She gingerly sat up, the lump on her head distracting her from the stinging of her palms. Dirt dug into scrapes on exposed skin. She brushed a layer of dirt off her face, coughing to spit out dust. Similar groans echoed around her.

"Patty, Tsubaki? Kidstar? You all - alright?" Liz paused to lick her lips. They felt chapped. She recidive acknowledgments from the rest. She pulled her foot from under a rock, where it had been pressed at an uncomfortable angle, flexing it to make sure there was no damage besides scrapes.

"What happened?"

"It seems to be a cave-in," came Kid's voice. "All of you were knocked out for a few minutes."

That explained how dry her tongue felt, thought Liz. Tiredly, she asked, "Have you two separated yet?"

"No," came the prompt reply. "If nothing changes by the time we get out of here, Fa- Lord Death will have a solution."

Liz felt around. "Where's my bag? I brought a flashlight." A bag was shoved in her hands. Liz fished out a flashlight. She clicked the button, and the sight of Blackstar's face with double-ringed gold eyes make her shriek.

Other flashlights turned on as they were found, and the group surveyed the area they had landed in. The hole that had been created looked so small from below, with no chance to climb back up. Kidstar tried to summon Beelzebub and failed; that option was gone as well.

"There are a few tunnels," Tsubaki commented. The walls were tall and the openings rectangular-more like doorways, or entrances to someplace. The wall around half of the area scooped outward, looking like it had been gouged out of the rock.

"This place is creepy. Patty, choose a direction and let's all go together."

They agreed to this idea, and Patty led them down the narrowest tunnel she could find, Liz clinging to her back. They crept in, hands on flashlights, Tsubaki at the rear.

At a fork in the path, Patty chose the right. As Liz followed her sister, a crumbling sound caught her attention. A rock tumbled on her shoulder.

Liz dived forward, pushing her sister and her as tons of rock fell to occupy the space they had a second ago been standing. Muffled shouts came from beyond the wall of rocks, and the sisters could make out their names being called.

"We're alright!" Liz shouted back.

"We're going on ahead!" Patty added.

"Patty!" Liz shook her little sister. "What are you saying? They're coming to get us, we can't go deeper in this scary place!"

Patty laughed. "It'll be fun! Besides, I have my big sister with me! Maybe by the time we find them Kid'll be himself again."

* * *

This maze, Tsubaki realized, had to be sentient.

Her reasoning behind this normally inane thought was all around her. Walls would slide in and out from the sides, floor, and ceiling, blocking passages and revealing more possible directions. Tsubaki quickly learned to recognize where a wall was liable to slide in. Part of the sentiency of the walls included a humanistic sexual drive that, to Tsubaki's embarrassment, tried to cop feels when she was centimeters away from where a wall could appear.

An hour must have passed before she bumped into Liz and Patty. Quite literally. Tsubaki flung herself away from a falling wall to avoid getting scraped, only to bump into Patty. Liz still followed behind her sister, but had her arms crossed in boredom, evidently having gotten used to the moving walls.

"We bumped into Kidstar twice already," Liz informed Tsubaki. "He says something or someone must be controlling the walls."

"I thought they were sentient," Tsubaki mused, blushing at how she had believed such a silly notion. "We could be walking in circles, though."

"That's poss-" Liz was cut off mid-sentence as a wall came between Tsubaki and the sisters. Tsubaki was left with nothing else to do but continue traversing the maze. She was sure to meet up with the others again soon.

A while passed before she met up with Kidstar. Their conversation was boring and intellectual in such a level that if the writer attempted to write it out, the reader would be disappointed and fairly bored. Thus, this writer shall blatantly take a "cop out," avoiding all of that dialog and description that would have otherwise been needed.

Instead of paying attention to the theories Kidstar laid out for her, Tsubaki smiled and nodded, her head filled with alarm. In situations such as this, she would be the one explaining, and Blackstar would nod like he was considering her words, only to hash her words apart and come to the wrong conclusion that could be ultimately solved by muscular strength.

However, this was not Blackstar. Or it was, but not quite. It was all very confusing for Tsubaki, and her mind refused to acknowledge that Kidstar was anyone but Blackstar. The flat hair she could ignore, but the gold eyes on that familiar face were so wrong in her mind it unnerved her. His voice was Kid's, which rang so wrong in Tsubaki's mind that she could barely understand the words themselves.

Just as she was stuttering out a question, a wall slammed down between them. She leaned against the wall to catch her breath. Once her heartbeat was normal, Tsubaki started walking. She was thoroughly confused by the place's layout, and she had backpedalled more than a few times to find the path changed. This messed up all previous maps she had been creating in her mind. This proved that all mazes she had done on paper before would be of no use now.

The wall in front of her suddenly fell into the floor, and instinct took over to make her jump back. Patty wasn't as surprised to see her, and only walked on past with a cheery greeting until another wall slammed down, separating them once again. All the walls around her changed, and Tsubaki jumped when she heard Kid's voice.

"Hello again," he said with bemused surprise. He frowned, and asked in his smooth - why couldn't it be husky and rough?- voice, "Are you okay?"

Tsubaki looked away, smiling. "I'm fine, it's just..."

"It's me, isn't it?"

"N-no!"

"It's unnerving you; Blackstar's body, Kid's personality."

Tsubaki looked up. Kidstar had his back to her; she could pretend Kid was elsewhere and the one talking, and this person be a stranger, however selfish the hope was.

"I don't understand it myself," Kidstar continued. "I don't know how to describe being two individuals; but I am that, a combination of their surface thoughts. It's so confusing, I can't tell what thoughts are whose. For now, I have to wait until I separate, as Liz said."

A wall fell between them. Tsubaki waited more him to say more past the barrier, but it seemed he had finished.

Tsubaki walked for what felt like hours, not coming across any of the others again. Her flashlight led her way, shining down corridors to watch the walls change from a distance. The walls didn't change unless she wasn't looking at them anymore and it made her feel as though the labyrinth was taunting her. As one wall moved away and all other sides cut off, Tsubaki couldn't help but be wary. One hand holding the flashlight and the other transformed into a scythe, she delved forward.

She found stairs at the end of the tunnel, and after climbing those, found more. The resulting climb reminded her much of the mile of steps leading to the academy. Eventually, her flashlight became obsolete as a spot of light tumbled down.

Tsubaki had to shield her eyes against the glare as it became too bright, and her next steps were on soft grass. Blinking away spots, she found she was in a clearing surrounded by woods. The moon laughed at her from above, drooling blood.

"Tsubaki!" Liz waved to her from the edge of the clearing where she and Patty were sitting, painting nails and coloring a sketchbook, respectively. A flashlight was positioned pointing down underground; the source of the light she had seen. Another was pointing at her, on its side in the grass. The moon and stars provided enough light for Liz's and Patty's small amusements.

"Are Kid and Blackstar out yet?" Tsubaki asked, taking a granola bar Liz offered her. The gun shook her head.

"I went back down earlier, and got myself lost for an hour before finding a different exit, and came back here."

"How long were we down there?'

"It was about noon that Kid and Blackstar were merged. It's now about ten, still the same day, thankfully. We only saw Kidstar a few times early on."

Patty spoke up. "Do you think they went after the kishin egg?"

Liz thought about it. "They can both fight without weapons just fine, so they might have."

Liz blew on her nails once more to make sure they were dry, packed away her nail polish, and put away Patty's coloring supplies.

"Now that we're here," she directed to Tsubaki, "We can go find the kishin egg. We'll take care of it, and we might find our Meisters."

* * *

The girls soon tired of their search, and rested for a short while under a streetlamp, the light a sphere of color in the black emptiness. They leaned against a partially illuminated building. They had neither found their Meisters nor the kishin egg. Eventually, Liz peeled herself off the wall and faced the other two weapons.

"I can feel Kid's wavelength nearby," Liz said, not surprising any of them. A weapon and Meister team, once they became close enough, could feel the other's wavelength faintly, even if neither of them had Soul Perception. The girls had grown increasingly hysteric without their Meisters, and grasped at any hint of them they could find or imagine. "We need to find them," she urged when they failed to react.

Slowly, Patty nodded. "I think I can feel Kid. Yeah, he's closer." Tsubaki looked down, the shake of her head almost going unseen. Patty made an excited sound and pointed behind Liz, prompting them to look.

"Kid!" Liz gasped, running towards him to embrace him in a hug. "We were so worried!"

Patty ran to join them. Tsubaki looked around, but couldn't see Blackstar anywhere. Kid was walking toward them alone, himself again with no trace of Kidstar or Blackstar. The child Grim Reaper did not appear happy to be with his weapons again; his facial expression was decidedly grave.

"Blackstar is dying," Kid informed them in a somber tone.

The notion was a shock, one the girls couldn't process immediately. "Blackstar is...what? Kid?"

"Blackstar is dying."

The statement sank in, and slowly, Liz began to cry. Patty appeared apathetic, frowning and wide-eyed, too young to understand how to feel.

Tsubaki pushed aside the glocks and, none too kindly, demanded, "What do you mean? Where's Blackstar?"

"Blackstar is...still merged with me, so to speak. Since Blackstar is foreign to my Reaper body, it's been spending the past several hours annihilating every trace of Blackstar, even his soul."

"What about the counterspell?" Tsubaki asked, fishing the spellbook from Liz's bag. She handed it to Kid, who flipped to the page the spell was on.

Kid said an odd word, but nothing happened. He sighed and handed the book back to Liz, who almost dropped it, the horror still grasping her. "It was worth a try. My Reaper magic is too focused on getting rid of Blackstar to cast any magic."

Liz sobbed, "This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't made you cast the spell." Tsubaki glared at Liz, silently agreeing. Kid nervously rubbed the side of his head. Patty hugged Kid from the side, becoming silent. He made no effort to remove her.

They called Lord Death using a window of a building, and he greeted them in his normal hyper fashion. Kid interrupted him by saying, "Blackstar is trapped inside my body and it's slowly killing him."

"Okay..." Lord Death tilted his head. "I was having a nice day up until this point. That certainly dampened my mood. How did this happen, exactly?"

Liz answered with complete honesty, "That would be mine and Tsubaki's fault." Tsubaki stare at the ground, too sullen to protest. "We tricked Kid into performing a spell to merge them together. We...I didn't know about this side effect- ow!" Liz cut off as Lord Death Reaper Chopped her and Tsubaki through the window.

"That was very mean of you," he reprimanded. To Kid, he said, "Come through the mirror. Daddy will fix it."

Tsubaki nearly fainted at the easy solution. Liz smacked her forehead with her hand, an action mimicked by Patty, and exclaimed, "Of course! I forgot!"

Tsubaki looked at her, confused again. "What do you mean?"

"I forgot Kid could travel through mirrors! He doesn't use it often because he can't take us through, but this whole mess can be cleared up just by walking a few steps!"

"It might not be that easy," Kid said. When the girls looked at him, he clarified, "I can't access my magic like this. That same magic is how I travel through mirrors."

Lord Death tilted his head again. "I don't know about that, but then again, my magic's never been concentrated on another issue before. Try it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?"

Kid shrugged, looking dubious, but nonetheless tried to put his hand through the mirror, only for his hand to stop as it met the solid window pane.

"Er. Maybe you can get a witch to reverse the spell, then."

"What!" The girls jumped in shock. Kid was silent, contemplating the suggestion. Lordl Death waved his hands and defended the suggestion. "W-well, it would certainly take too long to get back to Death City! Besides, there's a witch in the area who hasn't killed anyone in the past ten years!"

Kid ended his silent thinking. "He's right. There's no one else with magic for miles. We have to take this chance. For Blackstar."

Lord Death clapped his hands, back to excited. "Since that's settled, her name is Aello, and she lives in room 412 at the Flower Iris hotel. No matter what condition she may be in, and even if she pretends she's deaf, she'll be able to understand anything you say. Bu-bye~" The mirror blurred with static, then returned to showing their reflections. There was an empty space between Tsubaki and the others.

They found the hotel on the other side of town, snugly fit beside a loud, rowdy bar. Bright lights and glitter spilled out into the streets from the bar. A man stumbled out after they passed the questionable building, starting up the same steps they walked. With each turn and new flight of stairs, the man followed them, never stopping at a numbered door.

As Kid finally looked over his shoulder at the drunkard, the man shouted, "Ged off mah lawn!"

The four sped up. The man increased his pace, too.

The man repeated his order at them, and Patty lagged behind to wait for him. She shouted right back, "Whaddya got a problem with!" The drunkard whirled on her, mouth crooked in a menacing scowl.

Pointing at Kid, he shouted in reply, "I wan' tha' whippersnapper off mah lawn!"

"Whad if he doesn't wanna get off ya lawn!"

"I wan' 'im off mah lawn!"

Somehow, the group managed to outrun the man, and Patty caught up. They stood in front of a door marked in faded numbers, '412'.

"Room 412. This is it. Let's hope she has more goodness in her heart than other witches," Liz muttered, but the joke fell short. Tsubaki's pace sped up the last few steps to be the one to open the door.

A groan greeted them, then a weak laugh and a mangled hiccup. They walked in to the cheap hotel room. They gathered in front of a dinner table littered with wine bottles, keeping a careful distance and a cautious eye on the slow-moving lump sitting in the chair opposite the table. The mass of feather boa and sleazy sequin dress slid up, clinging loosely to a curvaceous form. Two arms rose and stretched, shaking at the moment the woman yawned.

The Weapons and Meister tensed. The girls itched to transform, sneaking glances at each other in an attempt to convey battle plans through eye contact. Instead of hissing and chanting, the woman, rubbing glitter and dried sweat from her nose, slurred, "Wha d'ya want?"

The woman gripped a margarita glass, empty except for a cherry, as though it was all that was keeping her anchored to gravity. The girls were surprised at the drunken state she appeared to be in, but Kid cleared his throat and spoke in a clear voice.

"Aello. We need your help. A merging spell was cast on me and my comrade. None of us have magic, so we need you to reverse the spell."

The witch, Aello, gestured with a hand, and Kid stepped forward. Immediately, a silent spell froze him in place. He struggled, but without his Reaper magic, he was helpless and the weapons saw none of the constricting spell. The witch slipped from her chair on to the table, knocking her glass and almost tipping it over. Slithering and stretching like a sensual snake, she reached to pinch Kid's cheek.

She yanked his head down to her level, so her uneven breathing ghosted over his ear. "You're not human, are you," she cooed, more of a sweet nothing than a question. Her hand not caressing Kid's face fiddled with the cherry in her empty drink.

"I can feel it," she slurred. "That soul...it's just...eating everything."

Aello pushed the cherry in his mouth, and watched his adam's apple bob for a long moment as she shoved it down, forcing him to swallow. A smirk spread over her face, and she spoke in a light, slow tone. "Can you feel the stone? I can see it, you know. I won't in a minute. You're not just breaking it apart, you're eliminating it. If I summoned it back to my hand, I'd only get half. Because you're erasing its existence."

Tsubaki started crying and sobbed. The sisters stared, too shocked to utter a word. Kid's eyes were wide.

"Would you like an example?" she asked innocently, a pout on her lips. "I can separate you from that poor soul."

"No!" all of them yelled.

Aello laughed, hiccups dotting the sound. They made her body convulse, making her body twist in interesting ways and knocking a bottle off the table. The crash was distant.

"Why no? Do you want to keep eating him? I've heard erasing existences has a certain flavor to it."

Kid's pale skin turned green at the notion, yet still, the spell held him captive. "You have exquisite symmetry," Aello murmured. Tsubaki shook with rage, ready to murder both Kid and the witch.

"How can we fix this and separate them without damage?" Liz asked.

The witch grabbed a bottle from the table and chugged it. She finished it with a burp, not bothering to wipe away a trickle of red saliva trailing down her chin. "Na' a clue!"

* * *

Erasing existences: It's a little different than what the Doctor Who series would say about this, since that series deals with timey-wimey wibbley-wobbley stuff and this story doesn't. The Law of Conservation of Mass? It's broken here.

Okay, we've got wine, a fruit, and references to a snake...yep, that's what you usually find associated with the 'naughty' side of women in an advertisement. All that's missing is an upside-down triangle (yoni).

Cherries have a 'stone' in them, if you didn't already know. We live in a world where fruit comes without seeds~

Symmetry: Back in olden olden olden times, symmetry was a factor in beauty. It would be like eyebrows today, or maybe how tan skin is seen as beautiful today. When describing a beautiful woman in books set in the 1800's, you might find that they describe that a woman had wonderful symmetry, or other such adjective to go with symmetry.

Dream: Kid saying Blackstar is dying is part of my dream. Also, the man yelling at Kid to get off his lawn was also in my dream. I just played with that part and expanded it into something funny. Nothing else was in my dream.


End file.
